Endless Dances, Burning Fire and Frozen Ice
by Slytherin Cat
Summary: If there was a season Bellatrix hated it was summer. She was the ice, and she should hate whatever (or whoever) could remind her of the fire that could make her melt. But the Dark Lord was different, he was the flame that drew her in. Not all fire melt the ice, and not all ice extinguish fire.


OS written for The If You Dare Challenge (Continued) for the prompt Fire, for the Black Beauties Challenge (Bellatrix, She hated the season of summer), for The Wand Wood Competition (Alder: Write a story with no dialogue), for the 52 Weeks of Writing 2013 (week 5, mandatory prompt: endless and sad) and for The Key Signature Competition (Db major). All can be found on the HPFC.

_Word count:_1142

**Endless Dances, Burning Fire and Frozen Ice**

Bellatrix hated summer. Everyone around her found it odd, but she couldn't remember a day when she had actually been happy to feel summer coming, to be outside under the hot sun like her sisters did or to go to the beach like everyone she knew did.

She hated the feel of the sun on her skin, always burning her though never leaving marks of its presence, blinding her and trying its hardest to destroy the perfect image of herself she tried to keep. She couldn't allow herself to wear lighter clothes – it would be showing that the outside world affected her, and it didn't, so she couldn't – and refreshing spells weren't that easy to keep for days on end.

It was why she loved winter so much. Winter was the perfect season for her, and she knew the snow brought forth the darkness of her hair. She looked paler when it was cold, but it was the same porcelain skin complexion her mother had, and she knew it made her look better.

Now that she had met the Dark Lord though, she had another reason to love it, to love the cold so much. Because being close to him was like standing next to a burning inferno, and without the cold ice of winter she would get burned (would it really bother her that much?).

He was harsh - but just as much as her - and they shared an endless madness, an endless circle of trying to hurt the other one, to see who could win (fire or ice?) even though she knew he was her Master, better than she was, but the game was such an entertaining one they couldn't stop.

She served him, killed or tortured whoever he wanted her to, his best woman, perhaps the only person other than himself he trusted (even he could see she'd never betray her Lord) and in return he gave her whatever she wanted.

It was glorious, flirting so close to that Darkness, each time getting closer to the flames but never getting quite burned (she was protected after all… her ice was so cold it could never quite melt, just as his fire was too passionate to be extinguished), always pulling back at the last moment, or whenever he wanted her to.

Sometimes she didn't have to leave, and those moments were the best and yet the worst, because getting too close would only hurt the both of them, though he denied it and she ignored whenever her frozen heart tried to warm itself again. He was their Lord, he commanded them, he protected them from whatever or whoever tried to touch what belonged to him, and they were his servants, she was his servant, so they had to keep him safe.

Getting too close were errors, it brought cracks they couldn't let themselves have, so while it felt good on those moments they both knew what to do after that, receding until the need became too great once again, until they did it all over again.

He wasn't a man, he was so much more than that and she couldn't afford to bring him down to Earth were the rest of them lived, because earth was the best way to snuff out fire (after water, but it was established it – _she _– wouldn't do that) and the world needed his fire too much for it being allowed to disappear.

So they danced (and _danced_) and no one ever knew just how endless, bloody, sad and marvelous their story was, except for the both of them, but it wasn't like they'd have wanted it any other way anyway. In a deep and so buried it was almost lost part of her heart and mind – the part she could never quite get frozen – she allowed herself to think that this could be the fairytale she had dreamed of when she had been just a kid, the kind of life every little girl wanted one day – a man by her side who'd accept her for whatever she was and would be just like her – but then she shut that door off and lost herself to something more real.

It was what told her he couldn't be dead, not because he had once or twice said he had taken quite a few precautions to avoid the unavoidable end, but because she was still here, still intact and she was sure she would have felt the world stop turning had he left it, had he left her alone behind.

But all those foolish people around her – in that cold, cold place where she had never felt so alone and yet so at home – thought he was gone, that they were safe and that he wouldn't come back. They couldn't see the world like she did, in all those shades of ice and fire, of her and him, of great and greater. They couldn't see that their story couldn't have such a normal ending, because they were all but normal.

They taunted her (told her it meant nothing, that he was a monster, that _she_ was a monster but that if she renounced him she could still maybe be saved) and she taunted right back (telling them she knew but didn't care, and _oh had the Longbottoms recovered their minds yet?_).

They stopped coming and she found herself alone with the dark creatures who liked to feed on dreams, on hopes and happiness. She had none, because whatever hopes or dreams she had were intertwined so deeply and tightly with the darkest part of human soul that the creatures couldn't feed on those. Sometimes, when she was truly lost in the emptiness, when she felt like maybe, just maybe she could try to find something in her so the things she felt stopped being brought to the surface that way, showing all she could not have right now, their darkness felt just like _his _and she laughed.

She laughed hard and clear, because there was nothing else she could do. She laughed to forget she had nearly betrayed her Master, the one who held her soul in his hand and could do whatever he wanted to her and then she stopped until it all began again.

And then he came for her, he took her out of this prison (one that shouldn't have hold her for so long or so much) and the look in his eyes, the fire she saw burning in his red eyes made whatever she had done for him worth all the things she had faced in between the four gloomy walls of her cell.

She took his hand and stood proudly next to him, and his fire burned against her ice again like nothing had happened.

It almost made her like the summer. Almost.


End file.
